Normal Charles Q Brown, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Employees, stresses want for dialogue to keep away from miscalculations in talks with PLA’s Normal Liu Zhenli.
The highest navy officer from the US has held a digital assembly along with his Chinese language counterpart, the Pentagon mentioned, within the first such dialog in additional than a yr.
Beijing stopped such high-level talks after then-US Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited self-ruled Taiwan in August 2022.
The 2 nations’ leaders lastly agreed to renew them once they met final month.
US Air Power Normal Charles Q Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, and Normal Liu Zhenli of China’s Folks’s Liberation Military (PLA) touched on “a lot of international and regional safety points” throughout their on-line dialogue, Brown’s workplace mentioned in a press release.
Liu is the chief of the Joint Employees Division of the Central Army Fee (CMC), the navy physique chargeable for China’s fight operations and planning.
Brown “mentioned the significance of working collectively to responsibly handle competitors, keep away from miscalculations and keep open and direct traces of communication,” spokesman Captain Jereal Dorsey mentioned in a press release.
“Normal Brown reiterated the significance of the Folks’s Liberation Military partaking in substantive dialogue to scale back the chance of misunderstandings.”
Brown mentioned final month he had despatched an introductory letter to Liu saying he was open to assembly.
Liu mentioned the important thing for the US and China to develop a wholesome, secure and sustainable military-to-military relationship was for the US to have a “appropriate understanding of China”, in response to a Chinese language defence ministry assertion that was launched late on Thursday.
US officers have cautioned that even with some restoration of navy communications, it was prone to take a while to develop a practical dialogue between the 2 sides who stay at odds over a variety of points from Taiwan to the South China Sea and commerce.
China claims Taiwan as its personal territory and has mentioned it’s keen to make use of power as a way to obtain its goals.
US President Joe Biden met his Chinese language counterpart Xi Jinping in California in November with the 2 males agreeing to revive military-to-military communications as a part of an effort to ease tensions.
Pentagon spokesman Main Normal Pat Ryder described Thursday’s name between Brown and Liu as a “constructive growth”, saying that the 2 sides had been working to implement what had been introduced by Xi and Biden.
“When you have got two giant militaries, it’s crucial that we hold traces of communication open as a way to forestall miscalculation,” Ryder mentioned.
In the course of the talks, Liu additionally requested for the US to respect China’s territorial sovereignty, and expansive maritime rights and pursuits within the South China Sea.
China claims nearly the whole sea underneath its so-called nine-dash line and has ignored a 2016 arbitral ruling that discovered it was with out authorized benefit.
Tensions have risen this yr, significantly with the Philippines, which has accused the Chinese language coast guard and different Chinese language vessels of harmful actions at Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Shoal.
Liu has emerged as the highest contender to exchange China’s nationwide defence minister, Normal Li Shangfu, who was fired in October two months after disappearing from public view.
Li was positioned underneath US sanctions in 2018 and had snubbed Washington’s efforts to renew contact.
Whereas high-level military-to-military ties between the US and China had been reduce off, different prime US officers had been nonetheless in communication with Beijing, and lower-level navy talks continued.